


Embrace

by whereismygarden



Series: Embrace [1]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Prostitution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-28
Updated: 2013-05-28
Packaged: 2017-12-13 06:47:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/821275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whereismygarden/pseuds/whereismygarden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Belle escapes from the hospital and manages to survive on the streets for a few weeks, but after it starts snowing, she needs a place to stay. She could make a deal with Mr. Gold, the pawnbroker, but she's got nothing to offer except herself. ((because bad-faery had an unfilled kink meme prompt))</p>
            </blockquote>





	Embrace

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bad_Faery](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bad_Faery/gifts).



> So because Belle's basically selling herself to stay alive, you could argue that this has a dub-con premise, but I tried to write it in a way that didn't feel coercive at all. Just trying to cover all the bases.

prompt from a post on tumblr and somewhere on the OUAT kink meme, but I cannot find it there and the html is being terrible, so...

Obligatory Hooker!AU- Belle manages to escape from the hospital and is living on the streets, careful not to let anyone see her. She scrapes by until one cold Maine night she has to find a place to stay or freeze. She’s been watching the wealthy pawnbroker, but she has nothing to sell but herself…

\----

                Today was different: the air felt different. The little bit that seeped into her small white cell from outside was sharp with the scent of dead leaves and turned-up dirt. The rest of the air came in from the hospital above and smelled like disinfectant, harsh and blue. Belle sucked in the soft, musty smell of outdoors when she woke up, and ate all the breakfast given her. It was only a bowl of watery oatmeal and a cup of water, but her appetite had woken and she scraped the bowl clean before retreating to her usual perch on the end of her bed.

                Why was today different? Probably because she was thinking about it. She didn’t usually think about how her days passed by: they simply did, in a cold grey trickle, perfumed with bleach and greasy food, scored by the muffled wailing of the ambulance and the hiss of the cleaner’s tools in the hallway. The nurse would be by to collect her empty bowl soon; she would be wearing a white hat and dress, as she did every day. Belle was struck by the thought that maybe every day had been one day, and she had forgotten her days because of that.

                But no, she had been here for eternities, a lifetime, time slipping through her fingers like the dried petals of a crumbling rose—someone had given her a rose once, she was sure. She knew her name, and that someone had given her a rose, and that the only thing she wasn’t afraid of was the sky. There was no sky in the cell, which was troubling. The sky was a blanket, and she was going to be cold here forever without it.

                When the nurse unlocked her door, Belle was standing to the side, visible but placid, her hair hanging before her face. She was stronger than she looked: she had been even stronger once, and her hands half-remembered the feel of heavy, dangerous things, but when the nurse leaned down to pick up the bowl, she had to content herself with grabbing her hair and slinging her around. The other woman, though taller, was off-balance and crumpled to the cold cement floor with a cry of pain. Belle fumbled at her waist for the keys and her fingers brushed against cold, sharp metal. She yanked, keeping one hand in the nurse’s hair and a foot on her shoulder. The ring came loose with a small sound of tearing stitches, and Belle snatched off her shoes and backed out of her cell quickly, closing the door behind the nurse.

                That had been simple, and she wondered why she had never done it before. She slipped on the stolen shoes—they were too big, but if she got some socks, they would be better—and looked around. The nurse always approached from the right, and indeed, to the left of her cell was only a door marked ‘emergency exit.’ She had an emergency, but she thought that maybe she needed more planning.

                The end of the hallway had a desk built into the wall, with a sweater hanging off of it. Belle put it on, zipping it up for warmth, and took an apple and a snack bar from the desk, stuffing them into the pockets. The shoes were too large still, hard to walk in, so she crumpled paper from the desk and stuffed the toes. Not comfortable, but not impossible. There was a stairway in front of the desk, and hardly anyone came down it, so Belle didn’t worry about being found. How to get out, though, was another matter.

                In the end, she simply stood up straight, marched up the stairs, and down the bright hallway she found herself in, past another desk—this one had nurses seated at it, but she didn’t flinch away—and into an area with a door to the outside. She didn’t look around, simply walked to the door, pushed it open, and continued outside.

                The air was cold, but not biting, and she was more concerned with stumbling on the uneven ground: it had been a long time since she walked on grass instead of cement or tile. She scurried away from the hospital, turning down a narrow street and walking with her head down, breathing in the smell of the outdoors and feeling safer than she ever had in the hospital with the grey sky over her, wrapping around her like a friend’s arms. Belle could not remember what that felt like: the hands of the nurse were sharp and dry, when she held Belle’s wrist to push a needle into her arm. Someone else had touched her, she knew. Everyone had family, and someone had held her when she was a child.

                A friend’s touch must feel like the weight of the sky: feather-light and cool. Or maybe she was just making that up, because she couldn’t recall.

\---

                She found a good place to stay; it was partially under the earth, and though she did not like it, she was used to the weight of an entire building over her, a mass of stone and brick. The bit of earth in her new place—it was not a cell, but it was not a home either—was an odd comfort. She could see the sky too, blue or grey or the dark, bright, unknowable colors of night.

                It was towards the woods rather than the harbor, and had been made by a fallen tree. The trunk was weathered, and the great rootball had acquired a covering of other fallen things, branches and leaves. She found thick branches and leaned them against the airy roots, enough to make a heavy shield, and was content with a small opening, a little hole that could be easily covered, to enter.

                She thought she must have sheltered in woods before, because her hands and mind knew what to do, how to use the space the tree had made for her and protect it. The sky still peeked through, little shards of it, but she could leave and see it properly whenever she chose, so the earth hugged her tight—maybe a friend’s embrace felt like the earth, hard and soft together, unforgiving but _giving_ —and the sky tucked over her.

                Storybrooke was easy enough to scavenge: the few restaurants and diners had small wastebins, and the grocer left hardly-ruined vegetables out often. Belle stuck out in her grey hospital things, so she crept around by night, going through wastebins and gardens—though most were turning cold with the fall, and the tough, bitter beans and melons were scarcely edible.

                She took up watching people in town, from the trees: she was good at staying still, so standing behind a tree for a few hours was no hardship, unless there was a cold wind. Mrs. Lucas who ran the diner was on bad terms with her brash granddaughter, but they loved each other. Ruby would sometimes give her a hug in the evening, after she put out the day’s trash, and Belle thought perhaps an embrace would feel like skin, warm or cool depending on the person, with the press of muscle and bone beneath.

                The mayor, Belle did not even dare to watch: she had a memory at the back of her mind like a little chewing insect, telling her the woman was dangerous. And her dark, flashing eyes were familiar; she had seen such eyes through the little opening in her cell door, long ago. The memory fell back into place when she was watching her bend over to talk to her son, and her face looked triumphant instead of kind. From then on, she huddled in dark places when the mayor was near.

                She watched the pawnbroker, because his shop was fairly near her nest in the woods. He was a lonely man, spending the day inside his shop or walking the town, collecting rent. People went into his shop only infrequently, and they never looked pleased coming or going. People were frightened of him, though Belle could not guess why, since he only went on his way: grimly but quietly.

                Of course, she did not know the secrets that the townspeople carried with them, wrapped up in their interactions and history. She was not privy to the stories told at the well or the—not the well, that didn’t make sense—at the schools, maybe, where the mothers went to exchange gossip, or in the diner, where talk was laid over the tables with the cloths and collected with crumbs in the corners. Maybe he was a frightening man, and her idea of frightening things was wrong.

\---

                Winter settled over Storybrooke unkindly, with a freezing rain that soaked through her ceiling of roots and seeped into her cold earthen bed, turning it to frigid mud. The gardens that hadn’t been pulled out at the end of summer turned black and the shriveled tomatoes fell onto weedy beds. Nighttime foraging through trashbins was harder with blued hands and numb fingers. Belle felt what little fat clung to her bones burn away as she shivered under the playground castle and in the overhangs of empty buildings by the docks.

                Storybrooke was such a clean little town; even in the areas where bits of newspaper and plastic bags blew around corners and clogged the sewer openings, she never saw anyone else creeping along the streets. There were people in houses that were boarded up at the front (they went in through the basements) but she did not speak to them. They had furtive faces, and Belle avoided them, not having even their luxury of stealing from the drugstore: she could not go inside.

\---

She shivered in the woods the first night it snowed, in her damp little cave, with a scrap of tarp she had salvaged from the docks tucked around her for warmth. Her body shook so forcefully she wondered if she would be able to stand for long the next day, and her feet alternated between freezing and frightening numbness.

The snow continued through the day, as she paced the edge of the woods, stomach no longer growling, just painfully tight. Some of it stuck and made slush on the ground, which soaked into her shoes and ruined further the newest paper inside them. The soft grey sky looked warm and inviting, and for a second she thought that she could lie down upon it and sink into the clouds, but clouds were ice and there was enough of that gathering on her hair and clothes.

                She would die tonight, if she didn’t get someplace warmer. Her hands were blue and her feet, when she pulled her shoe off with shaky hands, were a purplish grey, stiff and unfeeling. She would lie down in her nest and the slush would flood her hole and soak her to the skin. Already her legs were wet and blue, but her body was still dry, and dry was alive. She would die and freeze outside; there was death in the calling of the birds in the woods and in the ugly blackened leaves of the underbrush.

                She walked into the pawnbroker’s shop when the sky started to darken: there hadn’t been a sun in days, but she knew where it was, behind the clouds, and soon it would get even colder, as it slipped under the earth—behind the earth?—and the clouds stayed, unhindered by any feeble attempts of wind or sun.

                “Hello,” she said nervously. She knew things about everyone, from crouching behind tree trunks and under stairs. She knew that Mr. Gold made deals: he would help her in secret, for a price. Of course, she had only one thing to bargain with, and whether he would even want that remained to be seen. “I’d like to make a deal.” Her voice still worked, though she couldn’t remember the last time she had spoken to another person. Maybe she had spoken to the nurse.

                Mr. Gold looked up from the counter, where he held something glimmering and bronze in one hand and a pair of tiny pliers in the other. He was smiling, in a guarded way, at the prospect, but his gaze sharpened when he looked at her.

                “You might be better off at the police station, dearie. Or the hospital.” His voice was cool, detached, and Belle knew that was a good thing, though the warmth of the heated shop was lulling her body, clouding her mind. If he were pitying, as another would be at a request for aid, he would turn her in, try to help her and she would be locked away again.

                “No,” she said firmly. “I can’t do either of those things.” He motioned for her to walk towards the counter, eyes lingering on her hands and head. “I just want to make a trade.” Her mouth dried up at the thought, because she was fairly certain she had never done what she was going to offer him. Well, if he took her up on it, it would be no friend’s embrace, but it would be someone’s, and that was better than nothing.

\-----

                Gold didn’t know what to make of the woman standing in his shop. She had snarled brown hair and shadowed blue eyes, and her limbs were bluish and stiff: she could scarcely bend her fingers. Her clothes were useless for winter weather: a tattered, shapeless grey dress, a sweater, and indoor shoes. He should take her down to the sheriff’s station, see if she needed medical help, but he wouldn’t. She had come to ask him, and he wouldn’t take her where she didn’t want to go.

                There was something odd in her eyes, a look that made her unlike the other people in town, down to the bones. Despite that she was muddy and shaking with cold, her eyes had a clarity, like an unblemished gem, like deep still water. She was beautiful, he noticed, and very tired.

                “I need a place to stay, where it’s warm, until it stops snowing.” She was on the streets, then. There were a few like that in Storybrooke, but he thought he’d known all of them, their vices and crimes, but this woman was a stranger, and wore innocence as easily as the mud on her dress. “And I’d really like some food.” She needed new clothes and a physical and a stay in a hospital, but he could get her some of that. And then he could dig up something on who she was.

                “What’s your name?” he asked.

                “Belle,” she answered, and the name chimed in his head, like a single chord of music, a piece to a longer, sadder composition.

                “I can find you someplace safe, and food. And a shower and some new clothes,” he said. “But what are you going to offer me?” She wouldn’t have much: the name of a drug dealer, for they lurked in the town’s few alleys, or some other little scrap of knowledge he could tuck away for leverage. Belle looked away for a moment, lips trembling, then back at him, defiantly.

                “Me,” she said softly, eyes a little ashamed, though her color was so bad she didn’t blush. “I don’t have anything else.” Her fear should have been a deterrent, her situation a turn-off, but Gold had always appreciated fear. He wet his lips lightly and looked carefully at her.

                “Are you sure?” he asked, because he would be both angry at her and sick with himself if she changed her mind after she had warmth and food. It had been a long, long time since he’d been with a woman, and this wasn’t the type of deal he made. But she was beautiful, even if she was hiding addict’s scars under her sweater sleeves, and he liked beautiful things. Her dirty hair would shine, and her thin little frame would be soft under him—he banished the thoughts for a moment and studied her. Belle nodded shortly, and he looked at the clock. Just after five.

                “Then it’s a deal,” he said, and held his hand out. She placed her freezing palm in his and they shook, quickly.

                He drove her home, and she sat stiff and terrified in the passenger seat of his car, clutching the sides of the seat all the way. She was still shivering in the heated cabin, the bare parts of her legs discolored and goose-bumped. He had to help her out of the car and up the stairs, and she all but collapsed onto the kitchen chair he offered her.

                She ate only a little soup and bread, mumbling something about throwing up if she had more. He drew her a bath and left her to soak, going to rummage through his clothes for something for her to wear. He had a closet somewhere filled with some old skirts that he had intended to sell in the shop at some point. Which one exactly he could not remember, and he did not want to leave Belle alone for long, lest she fall asleep in the bath and drown.

                Upon his return to the room, though, she was standing awkwardly in a bath sheet, skin returned to a pink color, even around her toes, and brown hair half-dried and gleaming about her shoulders. There were no lines of dots down her arms, so she wasn’t an addict, at least not of what usually went around Storybrooke. Her pale shoulders and arms appealed to him far more than they should on a woman who was probably not well, but desire had its way and his mouth dried at the sight of her. He was taking advantage, but that was what he did: found people’s cracks and forced them wider, pulled something out and took it as payment for mending.

                Well, he was a quiet man and a private one, but always a fair one. And not one for mercy: he relished his small victories, plotted larger ones, and no one backed out. Ever. Belle certainly wouldn’t. She was beautiful, and he wanted to relish her, every way he could.

                “I’ve never,” she faltered, keeping the towel firmly wrapped around herself, “done this.” He had thought so: her pride had kept her in the outdoors for weeks, most likely, and only the fear of death had driven her into his shop. Well, he had done worse things than turn a woman into a whore, and the sight of her standing there was driving him mad. “I mean, none of it. Ever,” she elaborated, and he rocked back on his heels for a moment.

                This was a truly bad idea. This bordered on ravishment, even though she had shaken his hand and the deal was struck. Yet something inside of him, some buried whimsical aspect of his twisted mind, sang with glee at the idea. The woman standing in front of him, his to have, was a virgin, and he gritted his teeth, trying to drive away the appeal of the idea. She wasn’t his lover, just a desperate soul trading her body for a bed to sleep in.

                “Not to worry,” he said. He didn’t offer to let her back out—he couldn’t. He stepped toward her, cautiously, and she didn’t flinch back, though he thought she wanted to. It wasn’t him, just the idea, he could see it in her clear eyes, which didn’t look away from his. “I’ll be careful.” She bit her lip and nodded, letting him put his hand on her shoulder.

                Her entire body went stiff and tense for a long moment, and he held still, wondering if at some point even his tattered morals would oblige him to move away from her. Then, with a great silent sigh, she relaxed into his touch, let her whole body slump against him, her head dipping into the crook of his neck and shoulder. Every line of her pressed into his body, and his cock, finally realizing what was happening, stirred to life. He pressed his mouth against her temple and neck, stroking her shoulders with his hands, trying to relax her.

                There were condoms and other things in his bathroom, though he could not remember exactly when he had acquired them. He walked Belle to the bed, pulled the covers back, and pushed her down gently, leaving her wrapped in her towel. Her left arm was looped loosely around his waist, and he had to unhook it. That was a good sign, surely, that she wasn’t afraid to touch him? But there was a world of difference between being lonely and welcoming his hand.

                He found the condom and a little sample bottle of lubricant, then turned back into his room. Belle eyed the supplies curiously, but didn’t speak. Her eyes were sleepy, dulling the fright lingering within them. He shed his shoes, jacket, waistcoat, and tie silently, letting them fall to the floor in quiet whispers of fine cloth. Belle shifted to the side when he sat down and pulled himself carefully into bed, taking care with his crippled knee.

                The room was dim, but he snaked a hand toward the bedside table and switched off the lamp. Belle relaxed next to him, but he could still feel tension in her, the muscles in her shoulders tight like a nest of snakes. He rubbed her shoulders some more, pushing his fingers into her upper arms and back, enjoying, for a brief moment, the feel of her soft dry skin. He reached one hand down to his waist and undid his belt silently, keeping the other on Belle. His trousers were now too tight, his long-ignored lust refusing to go unacknowledged in the presence of a woman in his arms, in his bed. He wanted, desperately, to be inside her, fill her narrow frame, feel her every way he could.

                He shed his trousers with a little struggle, and Belle’s breath hitched next to him, but she put her legs over his, and the feeling of bare skin on bare skin brought him to full hardness under the bedcovers.

                “It’s been a long time since I touched anyone. I can’t really remember,” she said faintly. “It feels nice.” He took a shuddering breath and cursed himself.

                “Me either,” he returned, and stroked her hair. “You can get out of this bed right now if you like, and sleep in a different room.” He didn’t go back on deals. “You can owe me something else. Not this.”

                “I don’t have anything besides this,” she said, and pulled the towel away and tossed it to the floor. His hand on her waist was suddenly occupied with bare skin, and his fingers gripped her tighter, without consulting his brain on the subject. “And I know you want it. I’m not afraid. I feel safe here.” Her voice was soft, timid, but he could feel the truth in her words like a vein of gold running through sandstone.

                Gold eased her from her side onto her back and hastily undid the buttons of his shirt, shrugging it off. He nudged her legs open wider, snatching the condom and little bottle of lubricant off the nightstand, and went on his knees between her spread thighs. His erection was pushing at the front of his boxers, and he squirmed out of those with a slight twinge of his right knee. The condom was easy enough to open and pull on, and then he was holding himself over her, weight on his arms and good knee, and breathing as calmly as he could.

                “I won’t hurt you,” he said, unable to muster another offer to go, mercy slaughtered by the hand of lust. She had made her choice and now she had her end of the bargain to fill. He filled his palm with the lotion and reached between her legs, knowing there was no way she could be ready to take him now. She shifted underneath him, and he spread the slick artificial moisture with a greedy hand, stifling a groan at the softness of her inner lips.

                He took himself in hand and pushed against her entrance, looking carefully at what he could see of her face. Her eyes were calm, but she held herself stiffly.

                “Relax, Belle,” he whispered. What was he doing with her, this lost creature that had wandered into his bed for food and warmth? He wasn’t going to be able to calm her with words, and she probably didn’t want them. Instead he touched her cheek briefly as he pushed inside her.

                She cried out, not harshly, in shock, and Gold went still half-inside her. Her face twisted, and she blinked a few times, wriggling under him as if struggling to find more room for him within her. He put one hand beneath her shoulder and eased himself the rest of the way in, shivering with delight at the hot, tight flesh that surrounded him. Belle grabbed his shoulders with her hands and dug her nails in, breathing heavily through her nose, and he stayed still.

                “I’m fine,” she said, small-voiced, meeting his eyes. “Don’t let go of me.” He brushed a kiss to her forehead and pulled out partially: with a little, delicious difficulty, she was so tight, and then thrust in sharply. She didn’t let go of his shoulders, pulling him closer to her and running one hand through his hair.

                Soon he was groaning with every thrust, as her body became accustomed to his presence and her legs relaxed, falling farther apart. He rubbed at her just above where they were joined, trying to ease her, and she whimpered a little, shaking, but his concentration fell apart at the feel of her around him. He raised himself onto his hands and fucked her, ungentle, quickly, and finally fell to pieces inside her arms, with a strangled cry. He wrapped his arms around her when he collapsed onto her, pulling out carefully and wrapping the used condom in a tissue plucked from the nightstand. She put her arms around him too, and pressed her face into his shoulder, and he felt the hot dampness of a few tears against his skin like a brand.

                “Are you—?” There was no good way to ask it, ask the woman he’d just ruined (in the medieval sense, maybe, but there was something terrible about it being like this, being for his convenience and her survival, when he didn’t know her last name nor she his first) if he’d hurt her in the process. She wrapped her legs around his waist and clutched him closer.

                He found he did not want to let go of her either, and let himself curl around her: he needed to go and collect the rent from the Lucas woman—he had forgotten, when he had taken Belle back home—but for now he could just lie here and enjoy the feeling of someone lying with him.

\---

                Belle burrowed into the blankets and pulled the pawnbroker’s arm closer around her. He was restful, and though she was a little sore, she was warm and full. And she had someone’s embrace: not a friend, maybe, but it was warm and tender. And their coupling had been closer: he had looked into her eyes and fallen into her, and he had been heavy over her, hot inside her. He felt like neither the earth nor the sky: neither harsh nor light, but hungry and kind, and the _closeness_ of him had brought tears into her eyes and made her mourn the moment, crawling up upon them, when she would have to let go.

                She thought he might sleep beside her, but he stirred after a few long minutes and sat up.

                “I need to go get the rent, I forgot the diner’s.” He kissed her hair, switched the light on, and pulled new clothes from his closet.

                “Your socks are still on,” she said tiredly, the sleepless night catching her suddenly. He laughed a little and did up the buttons on the black and white checked shirt he’d pulled from the closet.

                “So they are. I won’t wake you when I come back,” he said. Belle smiled slightly. “I think you earned a good night’s rest.” He spoke casually, but she didn’t like the words, and turned her head away from him, wishing he had just stayed with her, forgotten the rent, so she could banish the silly guilt that was curling around her.

                But he left, and she fell asleep quickly, the softness of the bed an embrace in itself, and did not wake when the door opened with his return, and Rumpelstiltskin threw Mr. Gold’s cane to land with a clatter against the baseboards.


End file.
